Because James Cameron is determined to make Horoshima ghosts, a heartbreaking look at the darkest weapon of humanity

James Cameron He has always brought difficult truths to the films he makes. From Terminator 2Apocalyptic images a TitanicThe tragic greatness has built a career to face mortality, destruction and human arrogance with unparalleled cinematographic power.

But his next movie Ghosts of Hiroshimaadapted by Charles Pellegrino’s The next book could only be his most personal and urgent work to date.

In the center there is a promise of the death bed. Years ago, Cameron visited Tsutomo YamaguchiThe only survivor officially recognized both of the attacks of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yamaguchi, on his 90 and dying of cancer, gave Cameron a painting and what the director now sees as a call: to tell the story of what really happened in those two days in August 1945.

“He knew who I was as a director,” recalls Cameron. “But it became personal … and this has remained with me. In some way, I have to make it happen.”

Unlike Christopher Nolan’S Oppenheimerthat Cameron admires, but criticizes for having educated the physical horrors of the consequences of the bomb, Ghosts of Hiroshima He won’t look away.

Cameron wants the audience to feel it, breathe the radioactive air, he sees the color of the sky change, witness the human body to melt and break.

“This is a real horror,” he says. “Because it happened.” His approach will not be the exploiter or political. Instead, it is a question of attending the witness, waiting for neutral observers for an event that tells the world that most of us cannot start imagining.

That clarity of the purpose is the reason why Cameron is not interested in moral debates on the fact that the bombs should have been dropped.

“I just want to face in a sense what happened, almost as if I could somehow be there and survive and see it,” he says.

The goal is empathy, not the topic. It is not a question of justifying or condemning. It is about remembering, so let’s not forget the cost of oblivion.

Cameron’s narration will follow some key figures, including double survivors such as Yamaguchi e Kenshi HiranoHe brought his wife’s bone fragments to a country just to be hit again in Nagasaki.

These stories will not be filtered through a western lens or diluted by the study. “I want to be accurate and absolutely apolitical,” underlines Cameron.

He planned to work closely with writers, producers and Japanese surviving families to preserve the cultural integrity of the project. “It is not a question of America or Japan. It concerns what these weapons do to people.”

The stakes seem particularly high right now. Cameron is not blind at the time since global tensions are growing, nuclear threats re -emerge and world leaders who exchange barbi as bullies for the school courtyard.

“The watch of the day of judgment continues to tick closest to midnight,” he warns. “I want to make a movie that reminds people what these weapons do … how unacceptable it is also to contemplate to use them.”

If Cameron seems obsessed, it is because it is. He is preparing for this film for 15 years, keeping notes, collecting stories and absorbing every technical and human detail he can.

This is not just a movie for him, it’s a moral mission. “Maybe I do less money for this,” he shakes my shoulders. “But as Spielberg with the rescue of private Ryan, I will use everything in my cinematographic arsenal to show what happened. I think it is the job.”

What Cameron is realizing is a yield of cinematographic accounts. One who may not attract crazy like AvatarBut one of which he believes that the world has a desperate need. And at a time when the story is often distorted or canceled, you decide to do something rare: tell the truth, it doesn’t matter how terrifying it can be.

You can read the full interview with Cameron on Deadline.